1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the hypertext conversion program, method, and device which automatically attach link destination anchors of the link destination hypertext which is acquired from an anchor of a hypertext, to the original hypertext and, in particular, relates to the hypertext conversion program, method, and device which attach appropriate link destination anchors relevant to the contexts of the original hypertext to the original hypertext.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Conventionally, when a hypertext of a web page is created by using HTML, anchors are embedded therein to hyperlink to other web pages in accordance with needs. Generally, many people consider it as a courtesy or formality to provide a link to the top page of another web site when posting a link to the hypertext of another web site. However, the page desired to be browsed through the provided link is not always the top page of the link destination, but often an inner page linked from a menu of the top page. In this case, a link may be provided directly to the inner page and not to the top page of the link destination; however, the link to the top page is provided in many cases since web page creators of link sources accept a link destination web site creator's request of prohibiting them from linking to inner pages or consider it to be against courtesy to provide links to inner pages. Therefore, in conventional linking of hypertexts, when a user opens a hypertext and operates an anchor to know information in further detail, the user finds that the link is provided so that the homepage of the link destination is opened, and must search for and select a menu item which likely corresponds to the required information from menus of the homepage, which leads to a problem where it takes labor and time until the user can reach the required information. In order to solve such a problem, there are many automatic linking methods which enable browsing of the required information by following links from the homepage to which the link is provided when the hypertext is opened. In the method according to JP07-325827, as one of such automatic linking methods, keywords are extracted from the hypertext of the link destination, and links are provided based on the keywords. In the methods according to JP10-049425 and JP 2000-163432, links are provided when character strings in the hypertext of the link destination are matched with the character strings registered in a dictionary. Furthermore, in the method according to JP2001-256259, links are followed up to a predetermined depth, and anchors are newly created in the original page to provide links.
However, such conventional automatic linking methods are sometimes inconvenient since the links which are automatically provided when the hypertext is opened are not always useful to the user. For example, in the methods according to Patent JP07-325827, JP10-049425 and JP2000-163432, links may be provided to reference information which is not directly concerned with the original hypertext or to information in different contexts. In the method according to JP2001-256259, links are provided to the contextually related hypertext groups to which the original hypertext is directly or indirectly linked; however, since all the anchors which are obtained by following all the links are unconditionally added to the original hypertext, it is difficult to judge which anchors are useful for the user.